After I declared victory in our battle over the bird feeder, they decided to seize the territory under our widow’s walk for a housing development.
I could see why they would find the landscape inviting. Our house sits on a steep lot overlooking Lake Martin. From the lakeside, the house is nosebleed tall. There are two chimneys, a real one for the fireplace flue and a false one with a door that opens onto the widow’s walk.
The widow’s walk is reached by climbing the XX rungs of the ladder hidden inside of the false chimney. It is not of much practical value, but it is a good place to sit on a clear summer night and watch for shooting stars or to lie on your back and look straight up into the far reaches of the Milky Way. And it does make the house distinctive. When you say you live in the house with the widow’s walk, people who have seen it from the water know which one you’re talking about it.
Our builder resisted building the widow’s walk, because it’s challenging to support a structure like that atop the roof without having leaks. He could save us money by leaving it off, he said. Build it, we said. You won’t ever use it, he said. Build it, we said. It will just collect leaves, he said. Only if leaves fall up, my wife pointed out. He gave up.
The squirrels were glad that he did.
I happened to gaze up at the widow’s walk one day last summer and noticed a substantial number of twigs protruding from under a part of it. It clearly was not an accidental accumulation. I climbed up to the widow’s walk for a closer examination. Looking over the railing, I could see portions of the nest sticking out, but there was no way I could reach it.
The boards on the deck were nailed down, and I had to pry one of them up in order to gain access to the nest. I broke it up and sent the twigs sliding down the steep roof. The squirrels also had tried to chew through the soft cedar siding, presumably to get inside the false chimney. I repaired that.
Throughout the winter, I didn’t see any construction, and I thought the squirrels had given up.
I should have known better.
The drought-stressed oak trees produced a bumper crop of acorns, which in turn produced a bumper crop of squirrels, and, I suppose, a demand for housing. Spring brought a new construction season.
We sat at the dining table and watched squirrels stretching out on the tiniest of limbs gathering twigs, arranging them in their mouths, and leaping from a tree limb to the roof.
I climbed to the widow’s walk. Sure enough, a new project had started, this one far more ambitious than the previous one, a condominium compared to a cottage. Fresh limbs with leaf buds
But this time, I thought, I had outsmarted the squirrels. I had replaced the decking of the widow’s walk, fastening down the boards with screws so that they were easily removed.
I directed a cascade of twigs down the roof and into the flowerbed. I did not replace the boards, figuring that the exposure would discourage them.
A few days later I was sitting at the dining table watching morning come to the lake when I heard what sounded like a parade on the roof above me. I went out to the front deck and looked up. Three squirrels bearing twigs were marching up the ridge of the roof, headed for the widow’s walk.
I destroyed. They rebuilt. I destroyed again. In the end my perseverance won the skirmish. I guess they were under some pressure to finish new homes somewhere, so they gave up on the condos for this season.
They returned their attention to the bird feeder. Last year the feeder hung by a slender cord from a limb on a white oak tree, and I swelled with pride as I watched a squirrel, practically hanging from the tree limb by his back feed as he tried to reach down to the feeder.
This spring, they discovered that a tree near the white oak had grown, and its limbs reached out toward the bird feeder. I watched as a squirrel scampered out a pencil-sized limb and launched himself at the bird feeder. The feeder is only 10 feet or so outside the dining room window, but the squirrel simply smirked at me when I tapped on the window glass. It was only after I raised the window and shouted dire threats that he retreated.
So I moved the feeder to another tree that is visible from the dining room. I hung it well out on a limb, suspended six feet or so below the limb.
It did not take long for the squirrels to discover it had been moved. I watched a squirrel scurry up and down the tree, out on every skinny limb anywhere near the feeder, and back again.
And I watched as he launched himself from a limb downward at a 20- or 30-degree angle across 10 feet of space and make an aircraft carrier type landing on the feeder. The Flying Wallendas should be so daring.
I raced onto the front deck and shouted at him. He shinnied up the cord hopped onto the tree limb, laughing at me as he leapt from one tree to the next.
I replaced the cord with wire, thinking it would be too slick for the squirrel to climb.
I was wrong. He jumped. I yelled. He scampered up the wire with ease.
I sprayed the wire with lithium grease. He slipped a little as he darted up the wire, but not enough to discourage from trying again.
So, it’s back to the drawing board.
I could get one of those feeders with shutters that close when something as heavy as a squirrel lands on them. We’ve had them before, and they work, but they seem to last only a season.
Besides, getting one would somehow seem like cheating.
You can e-mail the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
